BHM17 – Nawal El Saadawi

Nawal el Saadawi comes from Egypt. She trained as a doctor and psychiatrist, but she is also an author and an advocate for women’s rights. She has spoken out against female genital mutilation for decades. She has shared the account of how it happened to her at the age of 6. She’s still involved in activism now. She says “I’m fighting against the patriarchal, military, capitalist, racist post-modern slave system. I am going to fight for this for ever.”

Her books include non-fiction works such as ‘The Hidden Face of Eve’ and fictional writing such as ‘Woman at Point Zero’.

She visited Scotland in 2015 and her speech was inspiring, both in terms of the work we can do in Scotland but also how we can magnify the voices of women doing the same kind of work all over the world, in ways that make sense for their contexts.

If you’d like to know more about FGM this is a good resource: http://www.fgmaware.org/ The film does not contain graphic images. If you’d like support on this issue or just a listening ear, please call our helpline.